VAN GULIK, ROBERT H.

Dee Goong An. Three Murder Cases Solved by Judge Dee. An Old Chinese Detective Novel...[Tokyo: Printed for the Author by Toppan Printing Company, 1949]. Frontispiece portrait of Judge Dee and other illustrations. Pictorial woodcut-decorated boards; light wear at spine and fore-corners. Limited to 1,200 numbered copies signed by Van Gulik and with his seal.  INSCRIBED: “For Anthony Boucher, this is how it started! See p. 231 [about ancient Chinese detective stories]. RH Van Gulik, Kuala Lumpur, July 1961.” Boucher’s ownership label is above the inscription. – The Lacquer Screen. A Chinese Detective Story. [Kuala Lumpur]: Art Printing Works, 1962. Ten illustrations  by the author in Chinese style. Original pictorial red wrappers. INSCRIBED: “For Anthony Boucher, with the author’s best regards, RH Van Gulik, Kuala Lumpur, July ‘62.”

Together 2 volumes, in 8s. Original bindings. FIRST EDITIONS. PRESENTATION COPIES, inscribed by the author. Anthony Boucher (pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White, 1911-1968), was a prolific reviewer, critic, editor, and author in the detective literature and science-fiction genres. “In 1940 Van Gulik found a copy of Dee Goong An (Criminal Cases Solved by Judge Dee), a seventeenth or early-eighteenth-century Chinese detective story set in the seventh century, translated it, and had it published in a limited edition...in 1949 [as above]. Like many other Chinese detective novels of the period, Dee Goong An features a magistrate (Judge Dee) who is called upon to solve three interrelated crime problems. Van Gulik became interested in the characters of Dee and the Tang dynasty and wrote a series of stories about him...” (Steinbrunner and Penzler, Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, p. 402-3). These early Van Gulik books are scarce, particularly so inscribed.